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			<h1>Gift cards? Seriously?</h1>
			<p>Day 01562: <time>Sunday, 2019 June 16</time></p>
		</header>
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2019/06/16.jpg" alt="Dogwood blossoms" class="framed-centred-image" width="800" height="480"/>
<section id="diet">
	<h2>Dietary intake</h2>
	<p>
		For breakfast, I had a large carrot, which I dipped in cashew sauce as I ate it.
		In retrospect, that probably wasn&apos;t the best breakfast, but I&apos;m out of cereal.
		My grocery trip got called off because I had to cover someone&apos;s closing shift that day.
		For lunch, I had a protein shake.
		For dinner, I had 497 grams of spaghetti, cashew sauce, and chopped veggie dogs.
		I also snacked on 177 grams of pretzels.
		I really need to cut down on my snacking again.
		I&apos;ve fallen back out of the habit of only eating when I&apos;m hungry.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="Minetest">
	<h2>Minetest</h2>
	<p>
		I made lists of which crafting ingredients are available for each element&apos;s <code>elemental</code> nodes.
		Knowing what&apos;s available for each element&apos;s respective range of subgame versions will allow me to make the crafting recipes compatible with all relevant versions of Minetest Game (as well as Minimal, Build 0.4.6, and Survival 0.4.6).
		Hilariously, all legacy elements have access to cats and rainbows as crafting ingredients.
		No modern elements do though, obviously, as being included in a recent version of the game dropped those ingredients off those lists.
	</p>
	<p>
		At first, I ruled out buckets of river water as a crafting ingredient entirely.
		It&apos;s only available when using the <code>valleys</code> map generator, which obviously not all worlds use.
		When I was working on weeding non-v6 ingredients off the relevant lists though, it struck me that certain map generator settings allow administrators to turn off the generation of some or even all species of tree.
		With that in mind, some tree elements should only be able to use their own wood, never wood from other trees, and most non-tree elements shouldn&apos;t be able to incorporate wood of any type into their recipes.
		This was getting ridiculous.
		I ended up deciding to ignore map generator settings entirely.
		That makes buckets of river water a viable ingredient for recipes relating to half the elements.
		I don&apos;t have to go out of my way to use it, but I should keep an open mind and use it if there&apos;s a good reason to.
		Everything that might be available is assumed that it is available.
	</p>
	<p>
		As a side note, ignoring the map generator is the most consistent choice.
		I was already having to ignore some pretty large issue to take the map generator into account.
		The most obvious issue is the <code>singlenode</code> map generator, which doesn&apos;t allow for access to a single Minetest Game element.
		Should <code>elemental</code> just disable everything when <code>singlenode</code> is used?
		On the surface, it seems harmless to do that, but <code>singlenode</code> is actually completely unplayable in unmodified copies on Minetest Game.
		If it&apos;s in use, something&apos;s been added to the game, an many of the elements probably actually <strong>*have*</strong> been made available.
		So disabling everything&apos;s a bad idea.
		The second issue is versions of the game from when the engine was just starting to support multiple map generators.
		Those versions of the game had no elements when using the <code>v7</code> map generator, if I recall, in the corresponding copies of the engine.
		If put in the modern engine though, these versions do spawn minerals.
		Without any trees though, forming a pick is impossible and mining these minerals can&apos;t be done.
		So I was also ignoring those cases, which was inconsistent.
		Theoretically, all elements of at least a certain age should have been disabled for consistency when using the <code>v7</code> map generator.
		That&apos;s ludicrous though, considering that the <code>v7</code> map generator allows access to all elements that haven&apos;t been outright removed from the game.
	</p>
	<p>
		Now I just need ideas for elemental nodes to program.
		I need at least one for each element, for a total of thirty.
		I have a few ideas, but not nearly the thirty I need just to get the mod started properly.
		There&apos;s just too many elements to get started though.
		It&apos;s overwhelming.
		So I&apos;ve decided to fall back to a plan I&apos;ve used for many of this mod&apos;s failed predecessors: start at an earlier version of the subgame and work my way to the modern version.
		This time though, I don&apos;t need to go all the way back to 0.4.0.
		I can go back to 0.4.3 instead.
		It&apos;s got the same elements as 0.4.0, but it&apos;s a bit more featureful.
		0.4.3 has a little bit of nostalgic value, too.
		It&apos;s the first version of Minetest I played aside form the then-incredibly-outdated version from Debian&apos;s repository.
		With these starting elements, I only have four interesting nodes to come up with.
	</p>
	<p>
		To start with, I was already planning to have a steel safe node, which scales up its inventory space based on how much iron you&apos;ve mined.
		There&apos;s no reason to change that now.
		It draws heavily from the locked chest bonus ability from the original <code>minequest</code> too, making it an idea that&apos;s always been intended for the mod I&apos;d one day pair with <code>minestats</code>.
		The only change in the idea is that in <code>minequest</code>, the extra inventory space came with you, while in <code>elemental</code>, the inventory is attached to a specific node.
		Consequently, you could have multiple safes, and each would increase its inventory space as you mine iron.
	</p>
	<p>
		Thinking about what nodes I&apos;d really want in such early copies of the game, I remembered how many things simply weren&apos;t renewable.
		A node that renews items in some way would really be appreciated (by me, anyway).
		With only one renewable element, this node has to be attached to the sapling element.
		I guess my catalyst stone idea might get changed into some sort of magic crafting stump or somthing.
		It needs to be attached to a renewable element for two reasons.
		First, it renews stuff, so it makes sense thematically to attach it to an element that already renews.
		But more importantly, you might run out of the other stuff and new players might not be able to get the mining points needed to generate needed materials themselves.
		They need a renewable material to start with, from which they can renew the rest.
	</p>
	<p>
		Checkpoints were always pretty necessary in my opinion.
		An old mod of mine from before cotton and string were even added to the game allowed players to set bookmarks at places they&apos;d been so they could warp back at any time.
		Original plans for <code>minequest</code> attached warp points to the iron element too, not the cotton element.
		I wasn&apos;t able to count plant drops just yet, and the initial idea was to have warp points be the bonus ability of the steel door.
		Doors let you go places ... it was the best I could come up with for a door ability.
		When I got farm plants counted, I moved the ability to the cotton element though, as it fit better with what beds do in-game than what doors do.
		So it&apos;s not intrinsically a bed-based ability in my mind.
		I think I&apos;ll use it with the coal element now.
		Honestly, as light level can&apos;t be adjusted based on a player&apos;s mining capability and torches were initially the only things craftable from coal, I really don&apos;t see a thematic node I can make for coal.
		The light they provide help with navigation though, which is a little tangent to warp points.
		I guess.
	</p>
	<p>
		The final element to find a node for was the sand element.
		But what should sand do?
		Sand is an element of senseless destruction.
		It always has been.
		You craft four sand into one sandstone, then mine the sandstone and get one sand back.
		Three sand just disappear forever.
		If I had the sand element do something positive, mining sand from sandstone wouldn&apos;t be so senseless.
		It&apos;d just be a sacrafice to power whatever cool node needed you to do that.
		Not only would doing something useful misrepresent the element, but would also make sand-mining not a waste, so it&apos;d take away the only quality the sand element really has.
		I can&apos;t make the sand element&apos;s node have an overly negative effect though either though.
		I don&apos;t want to permanently penalise players by jacking up whatever negative feature the node has.
		Additionally, I don&apos;t want to drive players to abandon accounts and create new ones to get out of the negative effects.
	</p>
	<p>
		By the end of the night, I&apos;d come up with a solution though: a loser trophy.
		Being one of the top-ranked sand-wasters gets your name on the trophy, but it doesn&apos;t harm you in actual gameplay though.
		Also, it discourages ditching of accounts, as if you&apos;re worried about your name enough to care that it&apos;s on the loser trophy, you&apos;re not going to want to give that name up.
		Additionally, if your new name is anything similar or if you&apos;re open about who you are, changing accounts doesn&apos;t help anyway as people will still know that it&apos;s your name on the trophy.
		It&apos;s so completely pointless, but not overly harmful.
		It&apos;s perfect.
	</p>
	<p>
		So now, I have four starting ideas.
		The renewal stump is going to take a lot more planning to get right, an I have no idea how to tie elemental sapling level to it, but the other three can be programmed pretty easily.
		I suppose I&apos;ll probably work on that a little soon, though not a whole lot, seeing as school will be back in session in a few days.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="neighbour">
	<h2>Neighbour</h2>
	<p>
		My neighbour whom I was going to teach to cross stitch didn&apos;t show up today.
		I&apos;m out of time this break though.
		Maybe some other time then.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="cards">
	<h2>Prepaid cards?</h2>
	<p>
		The workmate that owes me $1050 <abbr title="United States Dollars">USD</abbr> is moving to Grants Pass.
		They asked me today if I&apos;d mind if they sent me what they owe on prepaid gift cards.
		Prepaid gift cards?
		What the squid?
		What good does it do to put the money onto gift cards before sending it?
		Like, I&apos;d get if they wanted to send a cheque or money order.
		It&apos;d be mode secure than sending cash.
		But putting it onto gift cards doesn&apos;t it any more secure than cash, and only makes it more difficult to access the funds.
	</p>
	<p>
		I asked what the advantage would be, making sure not to bring up security or cheques.
		I lent them cash, and I&apos;d much rather have cash back.
		They never really would answer me though, and only mentioned that they&apos;d planned to send either gift cards or money orders.
		They thought the gift cards might in some way be beneficial to me, so I made it very clear that having the money on gift cards would be incredibly inconvenient.
		So they&apos;ll probably send it on money orders.
		But I still can&apos;t get past that gift card idea.
		Gift cards?
		Seriously?
		I can&apos;t help but wonder if they&apos;ve got some deal they think they can get on gift cards and think it&apos;d save them money.
		At the right credit union though, a cashier&apos;s cheque - compatible to a money order - would be gratis.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="vocal">
	<h2>Vocal lessons</h2>
	<p>
		It occurred to me that last time I went in to check on vocal lessons on the Monday before my term started (I think it was the Monday before my term started, anyway), it was too late to get in for the term.
		The local university&apos;s terms had already started.
		That means it&apos;s now too late to get in!
		And they still haven&apos;t contacted me.
		I got my application in about two months early for this term, too!
		I&apos;ve got to go in tomorrow just in case though, and also to see if I can get them to finally actually talk to me.
		I have no idea what&apos;s going on with my application, as they&apos;ve said nothing.
	</p>
	<p>
		My only hope of getting in this term relates to the fact that my school has five terms per year.
		I think the local university instead has four, one for each season, based on the paperwork I had to fill out for the vocal lessons.
		If I&apos;m lucky, the difference has de-synced my university&apos;s schedule from the local university&apos;s schedule enough that I actually have more time than I think.
	</p>
</section>
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